AIDCF advices advertisers against advertising on Zee, Sony, Star

The cable operators’ body has issued a warning to the advertisers saying that the advertisements haven’t been reaching over 200 million consumers across states and union territories for the last three days.

As the networks blacked out signals to several Multiple System Operators, the All India Digital Cable Federation (AIDCF), in its most recent attack against broadcasters, issued a warning to advertisers not to run their advertisements on channels owned by Star, Zee, and Sony (MSOs).

The AIDCF's cable operators had declined to sign new contracts with broadcasters that would have raised the cost of channels.

The federation claimed that 45 million households lost access to cable television as a result of the broadcasters' decision to cut off signals. In addition, it claimed that some major broadcasters were "pushing their agenda to enrich themselves at the expense of poor customer" and that this was the reason for the proposed increase in channel or bouquet pricing through NTO 3.0.

On the other hand, the broadcasters charged AIDCF members with distributing incorrect information and deceiving viewers.

The cable operators' association issued a warning to advertisers, claiming that over 200 million users in all 50 states and all the union territories haven't been seeing the advertising for the past three days. "Cable networks including GTPL, DEN, Hathway, Fastway, In Cable, NXT Digital, Asianet, KCCL, UCN and many more are losing more than 46 billion minutes of viewing time per day across the country."

According to the federation, these networks have a strong presence in the following states: Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, North-East, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, etc.